Trying to start this up again so that there is some kind of record I can refer to when the last vestiges of my shredded, terrible memory finally fail to yield even a blurry impression of what happened on a particular night (usually takes about a week).

The Ex are a great, great band. One of my favorite bands. They have been a band for more than 30 years, which is much longer than I have been a fan, but what can you do? They are from the Netherlands. I was very excited to work this show.

They showed up a little before load-in (picked up at SFO by Melne from Surplus 1980) so we went to Farley's and got coffee. Oh, you saw Fugazi at Gilman in 1990 or whatever? Big deal loser, THE EX BOUGHT ME COFFEE AT FARLEY'S.
They were interested in the California drought, and that is mostly what we talked about.

Back at the club, the band was borrowing gear from Surplus 1980. Katherina struggled with the drum kit, which was tuned much higher than what she generally plays. She worked with it a bit during sound check, and finally said, "I like it. It makes me laugh."

Apogee Sound Club were a three piece with an overly loud guitar player. He had told me beforehand that he likes it that way, and I am not in the habit of telling people to turn down unless it's absolutely clear that they don't know what they're doing, so I just pushed in my earplugs and let him blast away. The annoying asshole drummer was 15 minutes late because he went out to someone's car to get high and nobody could find him.

Surplus 1980 had two drum kits, and included an oboe and a clarinet. Okay. The frontperson, Moe, at one point said, "Thanks to Skylar for the sound," and after the show told me, "Sorry about that guy who booed you." I hadn't heard it.

The Ex were awesome, of course. They primarily played songs off Catch My Shoe and Enormous Door. I was given a set list with notes about who was doing what, and at the end of the night was asked for it back, to use at the next club. Very environmentally conscientious. Peter from Negativland and a couple of other people recorded the show, and posted a clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH-MhIAilu0

At the end of the night I talked a bunch of shit about one of the staff members who wasn't there. Ha ha!

A list of shows worked as a live sound engineer at Bottom of the Hill, as of 07/29/09. Started this list because I've done hundreds of shows there, and I can't remember anything about most of them. Listed chronologically. Short break from 10/20/09 to 10/12/13.